BATON ROUGE—CEO of the Pelican Institute, Daniel Erspamer released the following statement after the announcement of the veto override session:

“We applaud the decision of the legislature to allow this veto-override session to proceed. While there will be much talk about the historic nature of this session, the people of Louisiana care more about results than record books.

“House Bill 38, the school district fiscal transparency bill by Representative Rick Edmonds, received support of large majorities of the legislature during its journey through the 2021 session. School district transparency is among the most popular issues to Louisianans, with support from 95% of people across this state.

“While the governor called the bill “unnecessary” and “unaffordable”, we believe that fiscal transparency is of the utmost importance and is never unnecessary. With schools across the state set to receive $3.9 billion in MFP dollars this year and an additional $4 billion in federal dollars, transparency has never been more important. A potential cost of several thousand dollars per district is worth the investment to ensure taxpayers can see where their money is being spent. We urge the legislature to vote to override the veto of this important and popular piece of legislation.

”If this veto is left to stand, taxpayers will be left to wonder: what are they hiding?”

 

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